Having serious wireless issues WNR3500Lv2.

Well sorry to post this topic again but is anyone actually getting good wireless results with Tomato and this router? I am far from impressed with the wireless results I am seeing. I have tried everything. I even added external antennas which haven't made any noticable improvment. Yes the antennas I am using are most definatly real. I have three different sets and only one set is suspect. Which is a set of 7dBi's I bout off a US seller which are dual band capable. The other two sets I have are a 3dBi from TPLink off a WR1043ND which I got from Samknows that I can't figure out how to removed the Samknows software from so its just sitting here, and the other is the newest set that I bought off of Newegg.com which are a set of 8dBi's also from TPLink. The newest set are 2.4Ghz. I thought maybe the dual band ones from Newegg could of been a problem since they were dual band and maybe not tuned properly or fake. I am using Shibby's latest build for the WNR3500Lv2 which is version 093. I have tried using USA and Singapore, and I have also expierimented with increasing the power. I have also went through and changed all the settings that I seen recommended by Toastman in a previous post. I think I have everything setup correctly. All power saving features are disabled on the router and the wireless devices as well. Could someone who is getting good resutls with this router please share their settings, or have a look at mine and tell me what I can do to get a better signal? I am getting very poor results to all my devices regardless of distance. Therefore, adding a wireless access point would probably fix the problem, but only due to the fact that it would correct the issues with this router. I should not have to go down that route as the router should provide a solid wireless signal.

Hmm thanks for the reply Shibby. I can't seam to get a Acceptable interference level. It constantly says "Severe" regardless of what I do. I am pulling up a lot of wireless networks with these new antennas. There are around 30 of them but most of them are "0" quality. The highest is like 11 for quality on channel 1. Channels 3 and 4 seam to be the only channels that are not in use. I will try resetting my settings to default and using your settings with one of these two channels.

Anyone know of a good AP that will work well with my current WNR3500Lv2? Since I am having problems with lots of other wireless networks in my area and all my pc's support dual band except one, could I go with a dual band AP and put it in the middle of all the clients and just use it for all wireless traffic? Would the AP be able to handle QoS just like my router, or would my router handle the QoS and the AP would just be completely for wireless? Thanks in advance guys.

I went back to the 1st build of Shibbys for the WNR3500Lv2. I think it is 083. I am showing better quality in the 60 all green. However the rates are not very high. Anyone know why that would be? I have replicated the same settings as Shibby from above.

I'll put the 093 on 7th of June and will report back the signal quality.
btw I modded the routers antennas. Now I can get 5.5MB/s transfer over 20 meters away with a very very very very polluted 2.4Ghz band. (Over 40 neighboring AP.)

My antennas are 7dBi on the labels, but I am sure that they are 5dBi in reality.
Check this picture and decide what dBi antennas you require:
The bigger the dBi the smaller the angle. You decide what you need.

Test your wifi connection. In reality some laptops receive better than others.
I was banging my head on the subject - How properly to test the connectivity of the Wifi based on several parameters - distance from AP, signal strength, dBi, dBm, throughput, etc. etc. etc. How to create a script to do a proper measurement over at lest 48 hours time period. After all "the truth is in the data!".
But then I realized that it was so complex to factor all the variables. So I decided to focus on whats most important for me - the throughput. I wanted to max-out the speed that my ISP provided me with over the Wi-Fi. So I tested on different channels, with different advanced settings, tested the settings on the laptops Wi-Fi cards too. I found out that setting Tomato to transmit power of 0, which makes the driver to choose for me the transmit power, gives me best performance when I am close and when I am far from the router.
And please always remember, the Wi-Fi frequencies are SHARED. Channels overlap so much in the 2,4Ghz N standard when using 40Mhz that basically we have only 2 non overlapping channels. Do your testing twice - 1st time when everybody is at work, mid day for example. Then you can see all the APs working but they are only transmitting a few beacons every now and then. 2nd time test between 1800h and 1900h when everybody is home, laptops are used, phones are connected to the APs and everybody is using the bandwidth. Decide what you want and test until you get there. if I have to be honest, I went on the offence for a while and using Reaver and Backtrack5 r2 changed the channels of some of my closest WiFi rivals . But in the end, I am getting my speed over the Wi-Fi and really don't care if my laptop shows that I am connected at 72 Mbps or 155 Mbps or 300 Mbps.

Tomorrow I will have the time to flash the new 093 firmware and setup the router from scratch. I will provide readings with the current 092 and the new 093 firmwares.

Since I have already ran the pigtails I assume I can just screw the adapters to the top of them and this will allow me two antennas per adapter right? I wish I could find some good directional antennas as I think these would be the best for me. With all those antennas you have when you go to your devices in Tomato what does it say your signal quality is for the devices? My highest I have seen with two 8dBi antennas is 57 for quality. However, the wireless speed is terrible. According to Tomato at least. It shows my wireless speeds lower that 54Mbps most of the time. Right now I am seeing 54Mbps under "Rate" for my wireless connection. It will always start out good at like 270Mbps and drop terribly low. I wonder if this is just a glitch in the GUI and if the laptops are actually connected faster than what I am seeing via Tomato? I will have to investigate this later. I just wish I could get them up closer towards 300Mbps. That way I could take full advantage. A big part of why the wireless connections in my neighborhood are such crap, at least according to Toastman, is because they are using every channel. Where as according to him only channels 1,6, and 11 should be used or there will be a lot of interference. I wish I could get them all to change there channels that way I could pick two that where not in use for 40Mhz 300Mbps. Maybe I will try those programs you have mentioned. I hope they will work for me.

Don't try them, It is illegal! I was just mentioning it. Toastman is right about the channels.
btw. my point was - don't look at what the devices are telling you. Try to transfer big files between 2 local computers. 1 with wired connection and 1 with wifi. The speed in MB/s is what counts.
Yes if you have the pigtails you can just connect the adapters on them.

They need to just remove the option for all channels other than 1,6, and 11 via the firmware from the manufacturer. They need to pass out some dang fliers around here in the meantime and tell ppl to switch channels lol.

What signal quality do you show with all those antennas from the device page in the router? Also, according to the GUI what does it say your "Rate" is for your wireless connection when you click overview?

I wish I could find a US supplier for those adapters so I could add two more antennas to the router. I don't want to have to wait a month for them to be delivered from over seas.